What's Next

Two weeks ago, I left my job at Automattic to pursue some ideas I’ve had kicking around for some time. If there ever was a time to build something new, there’s no better time than now. I don’t have anyone who depends on me, and I’m extremely lucky to have the support of a country with universal healthcare.

Last week I left my apartment in Brisbane and moved back home to the Sunshine Coast, where I grew up. It’s a bit confronting to be closing in on 30 and living at home, but with the price of property in Australia today it’s hard to justify buying or renting when there’s another option.

In exchange for a place to stay, I’ll be dedicating a day a week to improving the family business online store. That leaves a bunch of time to work on other things. The plan is to build something (or multiple things) that brings in a modest income to sustain myself and continue to build more things. The first project I’m planning to work on is small, but is something that I use myself every day.

Time tracking apps are a dime-a-dozen these days, but I still haven’t found one that suits my needs so as far as I’m concerned it’s still not a solved problem. For quite a while I’ve kept a Google spreadsheet to track time to get a better picture of where my time goes (not just for work). The problem is that the spreadsheet is very manual and sorely in need of a better interface, so it happens to make a nice well defined project to kick things off. The great thing about this is that even if nobody else is interested in it, I’ll have a tool that I know I’ll use for myself in future projects.

As much as possible, I’ll be detailing the development process in the open (though the majority of this first app is likely to be closed source… I’m a big fan of open source but I still need to eat). I’ll be posting regular progress updates, technical and other details to this blog and an email list - if you’d like to get email from me and haven’t already done so, add yourself to my list.

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